{"id":6781,"date":"2010-05-08T09:45:24","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T07:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/08\/in-praise-of-lembit-opik\/"},"modified":"2010-05-08T09:45:24","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T07:45:24","slug":"in-praise-of-lembit-opik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/08\/in-praise-of-lembit-opik\/","title":{"rendered":"In praise of Lembit Opik"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lembit Opik played a minor part in British politics.<\/p>\n<p>No policy can be attributed to him.<\/p>\n<p>His own party no doubt cringed, frequently, at his antics.<\/p>\n<p>Best known for two failed engagements \u2014 one to a glamorous weather forecaster, the other to a Romanian member of the &ldquo;Cheeky Girls&rdquo; \u2014 he was, however, reported to be a good constituency MP.<\/p>\n<p>He lost his Lib Dem seat this week.<\/p>\n<p>Last night he appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\/episode\/b00sbqfw\/Have_I_Got_News_for_You_Series_39_Have_I_Got_Election_News_for_You\/\" target=\"_blank\">Have I Got News For You<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That took courage.<\/p>\n<p>He was clearly hurt. He had obviously not expected to lose.<\/p>\n<p>His humour as intact. Much of it was self deprecating. And he gave back to Ian Hislop in buckets in a way few can or do. <\/p>\n<p>His charm was apparent.<\/p>\n<p>He may be a bit of a buffoon. He may have suffered from wandering lust. And he may not have been a great politician. But he added some rare colour to life whilst doing little harm. And that&rsquo;s no bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>Which does make me hope he finds success in a new career. <\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s sad I can&rsquo;t say the same of so many retiring MPs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lembit Opik played a minor part in British politics. No policy can be attributed to him. His own party no doubt cringed, frequently, at his<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/08\/in-praise-of-lembit-opik\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}